Star Wars: The Clone Wars' Ashley Eckstein on Ahsoka Tano's Role in the Season 5 Finale - "This is a Life-Changing Moment for Her"

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We talk to The Clone Wars star about the huge story arc that is closing out Season 5.

By Eric Goldman

The final story arc of Season 5 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars has been a big one, finding Ahsoka Tano framed for murder and sedition and forced to go on the run. As we go into Saturday morning’s season finale, I spoke to the voice of Ahsoka, Ashley Eckstein, about the state of mind the young Padawan is in now that she's been captured and is brought before Jedi and Republic representatives, most of whom seem to believe she is guilty.

IGN TV: What did you think about this entire arc and the fact that it was going to be such a dramatic story for Ahsoka with her on the run like this?

Ashley Eckstein: As we get closer to Episode III, we knew that we’re going to have to start giving more of a backstory to what happens to Ahsoka, because we’ve known this entire time that Ahsoka’s not in Episode III. The closer we get, we have to kind of give an explanation for that. I knew that stories like this were definitely coming, but to have such a dramatic storyline with Ahsoka, I was just blown away. Charles Murray, the arc that he’s been able to write, and then of course [The Clone Wars' supervising director] Dave Filoni, being so closely tied to Ahsoka -- Ahsoka’s really been his personal creation from the beginning -- and I think what Dave’s been able to do with this whole story arc is just an amazing thing. It has so many different levels to it.

IGN: Was this one where you only learning the specifics via the scripts or were you given any heads-up about where it might go beforehand?

Eckstein: I was given a heads-up beforehand of where it would go. Dave wanted to tell me before I went into the studio for all of these. Because it was pretty dramatic, he didn’t want me to find out right before. And he also wanted to give me a chance to prepare for it. We actually had an exchange over email with some questions and answers, where I’d ask him, like, 20 questions. [Laughs] And he was so kind to give me pretty lengthy answers on Ahsoka’s motivation and what’s going on in her mind about this whole incident and being framed and being on the run and then being caught and going on trial, everything. I just really wanted to get inside of Ahsoka’s mind, and he was able to explain it all to me. It was important for me as an actress to understand it all and get inside Ahsoka’s head.

IGN: So what can you say about what we’re going to see in the finale? Obviously she’s been caught now, and it looks even worse for her now as far as all these things that make her look guilty.

Eckstein: Well, things are not looking good for Ahsoka, that’s for sure. Anakin knows that there’s more going on, and he knows that Ahsoka didn’t do this. But the more that happens -- things are not going in Ahsoka’s favor, so it harder and harder for him to help her out and prove that she’s innocent. But he’s still out there fighting for her. It’s nice to see that aspect of it. Obviously, at this point, her only hope is Anakin. But we’ll find out in this episode that her other hope is Padme, who’s been assigned to represent her. But her frame of mind at this point, I think she’s so emotionally drained and exhausted that… I hate to say that she’s giving up, because Ahsoka just doesn’t have the personality, to me, to give up. But I think she just doesn’t know what else to do. I think she’s just going to go in there and state her case and hope for the best. I don’t think she realizes, though -- and it’s probably a good thing she doesn’t realize -- that the odds are really not in her favor with the Jedi Council and obviously the Senate and everything else that’s going on around her that frankly I don’t think she can understand. She can only understand her problems. I don’t think she understands all of the other problems that are going on in general with the Jedi. So things are not looking good, and she’s a little bit resigned to the fact that she might be out of options.

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IGN: We’ve seen a lot of the Jedi Council be quick to believe the worst about her, or at least believe it’s very possible. What did you think about that as the person who plays Ahsoka?

Eckstein: Yeah, Ahsoka definitely feels betrayed, that is for sure. She knows that Anakin believes her, but she really feels like that if she doesn’t help herself at this point then nobody else will. So I think the word is “betrayed.” She feels betrayed. I think she’s just so blindsided by everything that happened. This is a life-changing moment for her. I don’t think she’ll ever be able to look at things the same.

IGN: One sort of life-changing moment for her -- a smaller one in the scheme of things -- is the fact that she worked alongside Asajj Ventress for the first time. It’s certainly an alliance that she didn’t see coming, and they had that little interesting interaction at the end about that. Going into this episode, she thinks that Asajj has completely betrayed her. But do you think for the brief time they were actually working together it kind of maybe gave her a different point of view on things, seeing what Asajj was like, up close and personal?

Eckstein: Yeah, absolutely. The first part of that, about feeling betrayed by Ventress, that’s just kind of another kick in the gut, I feel like. Everywhere she turns, something bad is happening and somebody is betraying her and turning on her. So for her to trust Ventress -- because that was her only option, and she trusted her -- and for her to believe that Ventress turned on her, again, is just one more betrayal. She’s just exhausted at this point. So the line she says -- and I actually love how innocent she sounds when she says it -- is, “I never thought we’d be working together, ever.” Then for Ventress to say, “These are strange times,” I love that exchange between the two of them. Because if you go back over the course of our series, I mean do you honestly think that Ahsoka and Ventress would ever work together? Absolutely not! So I think we still see a little bit of Ahsoka’s wide-eyed innocence a little bit, like she just can’t believe it. Then Ventress, obviously with everything she’s been through, I think she opens Ahsoka’s eyes a little bit when she says, “These are strange times,” because they really are. Ahsoka, man, she’s learning more and more by the minute and growing up more and more by the minute.

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IGN: Overall, what was your reaction and how do you think fans will react to this episode and how it ends?

Eckstein: Without giving anything away, I think two things are going to happen, and it’s kind of going to sound like an oxymoron here: several questions are going to be answered -- questions that they’ve had for a long time -- and then they’re also going to have maybe more questions than answers at the end. So they’ll have some answers to some questions, and then they’re going to have more questions that they didn’t have before. That’s what I think is going to happen. I would just say bring your tissues, because it’s a crazy episode.